Content area
Full Text
Emancipation: The Making of the Black Lawyer, 1844-1944. By J. Clay Smith, Jr. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. xx, 703 pp. $56.95, ISBN 0-8122-3181-3.)
In his foreword to this thoroughly researched chronicle of African-American lawyers through World War II, Thurgood Marshall writes that black lawyers "have played a unique role in American history. Imbued with respect for the rule of law and the responsibility that such belief engenders, these lawyers have used their legal training not only to become masterful technicians but to force the legal system to live up to its creed: the promise of 'equal justice under law.'" J. Clay Smith, Jr., a law professor and former law school dean at Howard University, fully documents Marshall's assertion. Emancipation's encyclopedic breadth (including appendixes, bibliography, list of legal cases, and extensive source notes) repays its twenty-five years in the making. Chapters covering eight regions examine the unsteady advance of black lawyers in individual states; other chapters cover black...